Regrets
by Aubertlone
Summary: She thought this...this was the key to everything. But......some things don't matter without the key itself.
1. Chapter 1

_To be honest, I haven't read or seen Naruto in about 2 years. But I did a lot of growing up since then, and writing here is more of a guilty pleasure now…..um, enjoy I guess. i published an old story, memories, i think, under my old penname abhi V. The first chapter is similar, just revamped. I guess this is like set back in the day, around when angst- man first left and stuff. Yes, I will continue, but it won't be a long one, five chaps max. Um...i don't wanna make a formal request for beta readers or anything, but i could really use at least one.....just hit me up in the reviews if you wanna help me out._

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Memories. They haunted her. They smiled malevolently at her, knowing the pain they caused her. They caused her nightmares. Fleeting glimpses of him plagued her consciousness. His sunshine hair, always ruffled by the wind. His oh-so-mysterious whisker marks. But the most she saw of him were those innocent eyes. Those flecks of cobalt nestled in those spherical azure gems, always bright and warm.

She remembered of when he saved her from Gaara, unleashing the kyuubi knowing what would happen, the pain it would cause everyone. But what did it matter when he did it for her?

She remembered when he tried, tried so hard, in all of his little ways to protect her so many times from getting her heart broken by Sasuke. She remembered, vividly her childish infatuatioin with that aloof bastard.

She remembered when she hated Naruto, and all he did was love her even more, even b

She remembered when he went out to try and convince "her" Sasuke to come back to Konoha and realize the stupidity of his vendetta, but came home alone with a hole in his chest.

Well, she got her wish. He went out a second time to try and bring him back. He had slunk away in the middle of the annual celebration of the Kyuubi's defeat. Nobody noticed his absence during the festivities. Few people knew when his birthday was. Less cared.

So he came home, if you could call his personal hellhole home, with the traitor wrapped around his back and blood blossoming under fresh gauze.

She was the first one to notice him as he stumbled over the gates. He had avoided the guards and snuck into Konoha unnoticed, an impossibly difficult feat for even a fresh, healthy shinobi.

She saw him trudge towards her house and loosen the straps supporting the traitor's form. He crumpled to the ground, oblivious to his surroundings. When he saw her, he flashed a sardonic grin. And when he spoke, he sounded as if all the vitality had gone out of him, replaced with the constant drip of blood from his mouth, painting his ivory teeth crimson.

"Sakura-Chan here he is, your precious little **Sasuke**." The last word hung in the air, as if to spread its bitterness around. " Now, please, tell nobody I'm back, so I can go to my apartment and have a peaceful night eating some ramen."

Sakura leapt out of her house and ran after Naruto, who after five steps collapsed.

"Naruto, please, be reasonable. You don't want to…hospital quickly" The words flew from her mouth frantically. As she neared him, she noticed his body shaking with silent sobs.

"Why did you have to love** him** Sakura? All I ever needed was you, and you went ahead and ignored me as well. Just like the rest of the village. Sakura-Chan, you just don't understand how much I love you…" His gauze loosened, and blood started streaming from multiple gouges and cuts. His skin paled. He turned around to look at her one final time before his eyes closed for the last time.

His lungs stopped cycling oxygen, his heart stopped beating, and then......... he was dead. He left Sakura crying out in anguish above his corpse.

All her memories of him still haunted her. But his last words kept ringing in her head. _"You just don't understand how much I love you."_


	2. Chapter 2

_Please review! Thoughts at bottom. _

Disbelief crowded her consciousness. In the middle of the street lay her best friend, the single pillar of her life. Tears streaked her face, cascading down trembling cheeks. Her breath came in ragged gasps. She kneeled there a full minute before coming to her senses and frantically calling for help and trying to revive Naruto before it was too late.

Sakura started pouring chakra into his heart, until she could barely stand and her vision flickered, interspersed with darkness. But she couldn't, she wouldn't let go of him. She pounded on his chest, her entire purpose now dedicated to starting his heart. She heard his ribs break, and saw his muscles spasm from the electrical discharge of her frantic chakra flow. When the medic nins arrived, she still hadn't given up, her aura bright around Naruto's fading chakra glow.

As she was pulled away but the emergency medic squad, she felt the slightest of thumps from Naruto's chest. Satisfied, she let herself fall into the comforting embrace of sleep.

The medic nins rushed Naruto to Tsunade, keeping the faint heartbeat going with a steady influx of chakra. It was all they could do to sustain even that sliver of life. They rushed to the hospital and dispatched a message to the most skilled medic nin in the village.

A messenger burst into the Hokage's office where Tsunade was, finishing paperwork. "Tsunade-sama, help us! Naruto has been injured and we need you to stabilize his condition" gasped an ANBU member, still winded from the run.

"What?! When did he even return? No, it doesn't matter now. Dammit! All right, bring me up to speed on his injuries on the way to the hospital!"

Tsunade sprinted to Naruto's side and replaced the exhausted emergency squad. Seconds, minutes, hours passed, and Naruto's condition still had not improved. It took all of her energy to simply sustain his heartbeat, and Tsunade did not dare try to close his injuries as even the slightest break in her concentration might sever Naruto's tenuous connection to life.

"Get Shizune in here! I can't do this by myself!" yelled Tsunade, spent from sustaining Naruto for so long.

Shizune arrived almost immediately, taking over Tsunade's position of sustaining Naruto's heart. Tsunade took the respite to open her chakra seal and use it to precisely close and connect Naruto's multiple injuries. No bruise, cut, not even a scratch was left on Naruto when Tsunade was done.

"Ok Shizune, cut off the chakra flow to Naruto's heart. There's nothing left we can do but hope he can sustain himself."

The morning's rays woke Sakura. She looked around to find herself in a familiar place, an overnight room in the hospital. She stumbled out of her bed and disconnected her IV. Removing her hospital gown and dressing in more appropriate attire, she left her room and went to find Naruto's room.

Much to her surprise, Naruto was nowhere to be found. She looked on every floor and asked every secretary she knew about his whereabouts, but no one knew where he Confused, she went to the Hokage's office, hoping for some answers._ Dammit, I want to see my friends!_ She then realized that she had completely forgotten about Sasuke. She found out he was in the third floor, room eight. _I'm sure Naruto's fine. He's probably not even in the hospital anymore. I'll find him right after I visit Sasuke._

She pushed the door open, eager to meet her old teammate. But she hesitated. What kind of person had Sasuke become in the three years since he left? How had Orochimaru changed him? Was any part of Sasuke left that Sakura had once cherished? _I wonder what he's like now. I wonder… if he's changed. _Pushing aside her doubts, she swept into the room, still uneasy about meeting the first and last person that broke her heart.

Sasuke was awake and looking out the window. His appearance hadn't changed at all from their days as Team Seven, save for his height. "Sasuke…" The words she had waiting so long to say caught in her throat. That same feeling that made her feel so, so drawn to him as a child was still there, perhaps somewhat diminished. She had spent long nights talking herself through what she would do when she finally spoke to Sasuke. She would dazzle him, she would scold him, she would embrace him, and the scenario that always appeared when she was thinking clearly was what unfolded that morning.

She slapped him, hard. As hard as she could without injuring him further. She made sure it hurt. No words could truly express her feelings towards Sasuke at that point, but she tried her best.

"You bastard! Do you know what the hell you put me and Naruto through these last few years? What the fuck did you think you were doing? Did you really think that any of your dreams would ever come true if you left all your friends behind?"

"…I wouldn't expect you to understand" His coldness still scared Sakura, just like the last time they spoke, when Sasuke left her unconscious at the village gates.

"What about Naruto? He **is** your best friend, and yesterday he almost died dragging you back to your home. If anyone understands, it's him, and you killed him. It took every last bit of my chakra to start his heart again."

Sakura paused to take a breath. All of her feelings, all her inner turmoil spilled out in front of the most dangerous missing-nin since Orochimaru himself. "Sasuke, for your own good, move on, like I did. Forget your revenge, focus on what you have. Right now, it's not very much."

She left abruptly, heading towards the Hokage's office. _I have to find out how Naruto is. He has to be okay. He just has to be. I need him too much. _Sakura entered the Hokage's cavernous, sprawling office to see a consumed Tsunade sorting paperwork, the bags under her eyes more pronounced than Sakura had ever seen before. Tsunade seemed somewhat saddened Sakura's presence. Neither kunoichi spoke, both unwilling to recount the events of the previous night.

Finally Tsunade spoke. "Sakura… I hate myself for even saying this, but no matter what we do, Naruto is going to die."

_Guys, I'm still hurting for a beta reader, mostly to bounce ideas off of. Hit me up with a pm. I promise, I'll make the next one longer. Right now, I'm just trying to hammer out a meaningful piece before my responsibilities catch up to me. And yea, I changed the time from right after angst-man left to a little bit into Part II. Also, yes, her new outlook on life may seem abrupt, but I just read EVERY Naruto chapter over the last five days, and the new stuff has her as less of a mindless drone and more of a thinking person, less bound by delusions and such._


	3. Chapter 3

_Please review, even twice if you already have! I'm insecure. :0 Thoughts at bottom_

The air grew still. The silence was unbroken. Sakura couldn't believe what Tsunade was saying. How did this happen? How was this possible? She had started his heart. _I felt it. I know I felt it._ It seemed simply impossible that her pillar, her best friend was going to die.

"No…No that's not possible! I swear I felt his heart beating before I passed out, and his injuries were bad, but….." Her words faded as her throat grew heavy with guilt. _This is entirely my fault. If I'd only convinced him Sasuke was a lost cause, that he would never be happy until….I'm such an idiot!_

"Sakura, there is nothing you could have done. You haven't been trained how to resuscitate a completely chakra-drained body. And…that curse seal did nothing but hamper your efforts."

"No, but his heart **was** beating. I know it…" Tsunade cut her off with a wave of her hand.

"There are very careful, strict procedures we follow to properly resuscitate a person in Naruto's state. As I said, you have not yet been trained how to do that." Tsunade sighed, dropping her countenance, letting a little of her fatigue show. "The truth is so few shinobi in that state survive and make it back to the village that it's a waste to train any but the highest level of medic-nins in this particular type of resuscitation."

"Remember your lessons from a few months ago? You should recall how the vital organs and our chakra systems are intertwined. Both need each other to survive, and the death of either system makes it impossible for the other one to continue. I don't know how you managed to get his heart beating. It took all of my chakra, including my seal, and Shizune to stabilize him… but there's nothing we can do for him now. The chakra systems around his heart were completely exhausted, and you only had 33 seconds from when his heart stopped before those pathways shut down for good. It's a miracle he lasted as long as he did. His heart is beating now with the chakra we pushed into him last night. So little of it got through, and his blood is saturated with foreign chakra. We can't keep him going any longer."

"B-But, there has to be something you can do! Konoha has the most advanced medic-nins in all of the nations!" Something snapped inside Sakura, giving way to anger. Her voice rose steadily until she was shouting. "He can't die! No!" All of her fury, her conviction and her defiance in the face of death left her. She felt oddly deflated, like a fake palindrome.

Tsunade looked on with kind eyes, the same eyes that saw her brother, her lover, and now her successor fade away. A dry smile appeared and her kind eyes moistened, heavy with sadness. "He's not dead yet. He'll be waking up in a few hours. He'll have a day left, may less. I'll send for you then. Now please, leave. I have to inform everyone that Naruto will die today."

As she was leaving, Sakura glanced over and saw tears sliding down Tsunade's face. She didn't notice the tears sliding down her own. Walking out the door, a new feeling assailed her. She felt weightless, as if she was plummeting off a cliff, free falling.

Sakura started walking around Konoha, trying to come to terms with everything that happened. Naruto, who had come back from his trip with Jiraiya just two months before, had grown so powerful, and yet even more determined to bring back her Sasuke. She still couldn't believe that he did it. In the worst way possible. She stopped, the full magnitude of the situation hitting her square in the chest. Naruto was dead.

The realization hit her like a brick. She had never had a close friend die. You could say she was spoiled that way. Yes, Team 7 had its share of close calls, but never, even during any of the fights did she truly fear for the lives of Naruto or Sasuke. They're strong enough, she told herself. They'll never be in real danger. After all, who could stand against the team of the sole Uchiha heir and the single most determined person to ever become a Leaf shinobi? No one, she told herself. Standing together, they were invincible. They would never be torn apart, she told herself.

But she failed to consider that they would follow different paths. True, they never were torn apart. Rather, they repelled each other. Neither could agree on anything. Both polar opposites, both eternal rivals. And most and least of all, best friends.

The hours flew by quickly. Nothing seemed to be quite the same. Her quiet companions, Sorrow and Death followed her everywhere. The air that filled her lungs, the sight of cherry blossom petals falling at five centimeters per second, nothing was as it once was. How could it be? Naruto Uzumaki, the most vibrant, shining life in all of the Hidden Leaf would be dead in less than a day. And whose fault was it? Haruno Sakura's.

She stopped, savoring the day, the pouring rain, for him. For Naruto, who would no longer be able to. She turned around and trudged back to the hospital, a thought scratching at the back of her head.

_Sorry about how rough this chapter is. Still hurting for a beta reader hit me up with a pm. Please? The chapters will be longer if you do. btw, If you notice the change in tones, good for you. I won't bore you with the details, but watch 5CM PER SECOND._

_Ganon – I know what you're trying to say. After all, where would we be without epics? But I'm shooting for more of an emotional core, and detail toward training and stuff isn't needed for this kind of interpretation. Neither are battle scenes. Maybe next time. I do recommend TRAINING FOR THE JOB by desaix._


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